Imre.
P. S. I think of you often, Oswald."
This communication, like its predecessor, was written in a tenth-century kind of hand, with a blunt lead-pencil! I sent its authour a few lines, of quite as laconical a tone as he had given me to understand he so much preferred.
The next day, yet another communication from the P... Camp! Three billets in as many days, from a person who "hated to write letters," and "never wrote them when he could get out of it!" Clearly, Imre in camp was not Imre in Szent-Istvánhely!
"Thank you, dear Oswald, for your note. Do not think too much of that old nonsense (azon régi bolondság) about not writing letters. It depends. I send my this in a spare moment. But I have nothing whatever to say. Weather here warm and rainy. Oswald, you are a great deal in my thoughts. I hope I am often in yours. I shall not return tomorrow, but I intend to be with you on Sunday. Life is wearisome. But so long as one has a friend, one can get on with much that is part of the burden; or possibly with all of it.—Yours ever—
Imre"
I have neglected to mention that the second person of intimate Magyar address, the "thou" and "thee", was used in these epistles of Imre, in my answers, with the same instinctiveness that had brought it to our lips on that evening in the Z... park. I shall not try to translate it systematically, however; any more than I shall note with system its disused English equivalents in the dialogue that occurs in the remainder of this record. More than once before the evening named, Imre and I had exchanged this familiarity, half in fun. But now it had come to stay. Thenceforth we adhered to it; a kind of serious symbolism as well as intimate sweetness in it.
I looked at that note with attention: first, because it was so opposed in tenor to the Imre von N... "model". Second, because there appeared to have been a stroke under the commonplace words "Yours ever". That stroke had been smirched out, or erased. Was it like Imre to be sentimental, for an instant, in a letter?—even in the most ordinary accent? Well, if he had given way to it, to try to conceal such a sign of the failing, particularly without re-writing the letter... why, that was characteristic enough! In sending him a newspaper-clipping, along with a word or so, I referred to the unnecessary briskness of our correspondence.
".... Pray do not trouble yourself, my dear N..., to change your habits on my account. Do not write, now or ever, only because a word from you is a pleasure to me. Besides I am not yet on my homeward-journey. Save your postal artillery."
To the foregoing from me, Imre's response was this: